Case Study: Growing regular givers by 300% in completely new markets 🌏

By Danni Adam

Background

Make-A-Wish International (MAWI) supports affiliate offices in over 50 countries, ensuring their long-term sustainability and growth. Their particular fundraising remit is to recruit donors from markets and audiences not currently reached by affiliate fundraising campaigns. Facing declining online donations and a stagnant monthly donor base, MAWI partnered with Nick Burne Digital to recruit new online donors and, in particular, maximize regular givers through paid digital campaigns. In July 2024, the Global Wish campaign was launched to address this challenge.

Strategy

Juan Hendrawan from the MAWI team already had a rough concept for a Global Wish campaign aimed at recruiting donors to help spread wishes globally. To bring it to life, Danni from the Nick Burne Digital team implemented the following:

  • Message Testing: Finalized the campaign name and core messaging.

  • Content Creation: Developed and managed the production of an animated video as the campaign's central piece, alongside other ad assets for Meta and Google. The video was produced by Nick Burne Digital's creative lead, Kirsten Downie.

  • Landing Page Optimization: A/B tested donation forms to maximize conversion and recurring donor sign-ups.

  • Email Campaigns: Designed launch emails and a new welcome series to convert one-time donors into regular givers.

Ad Management: Strategically planned and optimized Meta, Google Paid, and Grant ads.

Results

  • Achieved a 12-month ROAS exceeding 1.0 from immediate online donors.

  • 17.5% of new online donors were recurring monthly givers.

  • 41% of all regular donors who converted in the last 12 months were originally recruited via this campaign.

  • The overall number of monthly givers tripled in just eight months.

  • The average monthly donor recruitment increased by over 100% compared to the six months prior to launch.

Key Success Factors

  • Engaging Video Content: A compelling animated video that conveyed MAWI’s global mission beyond individual cases, the production of which was informed by previous message testing completed by Danni. Several 'mini cuts' and accompanying GIF and single-image content featuring real Wish Kids were also produced to scale up campaigns and support retargeting.

  • Targeted Ad Strategy: Regularly monitored results to refine target locations and identify countries that could benefit from further development with native-language ads. We also utilised single separate Instagram only ads to audience groups where we saw high Instagram results. 

  • Donation Form Optimization: MAWI uses Fundraise Up for their donation forms, which provides a large number of customization options, which we have continually tested and refined.

  • Multi-Platform Approach: Utilized both Google Grant and Google Paid in a two-step approach with Meta, with the latter retargeting a large number of web visitors generated by Google.

  • Maximizing Regular Donor Conversion at Every Stage: MAWI's global focus meant they were unable to utilize telemarketing or mail for later regular-donor conversion. Forms and messaging were optimized to maximize the percentage of regular givers. Additionally, email conversion journeys and retargeting ads helped convert one-time cash givers from this campaign.

Conclusion

Global Wish has become an ongoing and high-performing campaign for new market expansion. The animated video continues to drive donor recruitment at a low cost per acquisition, and insights from this initiative have informed subsequent campaigns. Notably, the campaign attracted a younger demographic than previously thought possible—53% of donors were under 35, with 71% originating from Instagram.

Is your organisation interested in breaking into new markets? Book a call with Nick to explore new market opportunities and ways we can help you.